Can Race Be a Factor in College Admissions? The Supreme Court Reconsiders Affirmative Action.
KIT R. ROANE, Producer
ANNE CHECLER, Editor
The Supreme Court is considering two cases involving colleges’ use of race as a factor in creating a diverse student body. For decades, the Court has upheld this type of affirmative action, most recently in a ruling in 2016. Now, in one case on the Court’s docket, Harvard is accused of discriminating against Asian Americans. A second case, against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, argues that the university gave unfair preference to Black, Native American and Hispanic students, putting white and Asian applicants at a disadvantage.
The universities have defended their admissions practices, citing past Supreme Court rulings that support the use of race as a factor. A decision in these two new cases could come in the spring of 2023.
The man behind the Supreme Court fight is Edward Blum, a conservative activist who’s spent decades seeding lawsuits to challenge affirmative action practices that he sees as unconstitutional. "Kids check which race they belong to, and then they're judged either affirmatively or negatively by competitive admissions officers based upon the box they check," Blum told Retro Report. "That is inherently polarizing and inherently illegal and unconstitutional."
In this video, a collaboration with the Hechinger Report and WCNY Connected with support from the Pulitzer Center, Retro Report looks back at an important test case in 2003, when Justice Sandra Day O’Connor cast the crucial vote to uphold affirmative action admission policies despite her misgivings about unintended consequences.
That decision was important because it upheld the use of affirmative action to create racially diverse student bodies, affirming a broad rationale — that doing so was good for the country.
"In the context of its individualized inquiry into the possible diversity contributions of all applicants," Justice O'Connor wrote for the 5-4 majority, a "race-conscious admissions program does not unduly harm nonminority applicants."
Linda Greenhouse, who covered the Supreme Court for The New York Times, told Retro Report that O'Connor's opinion — allowing the consideration of race as part of a “holistic” admissions process — also left open the door to the types of suits that now threaten these policies today.
"She did something very unusual in the opinion," Greenhouse told us. "She said, we expect that 25 years from now, American society would work this problem out, and it won't need us anymore. It won't need affirmative action anymore."
"That was a kind of a safety net at the time, and now of course it's a looming vulnerability," Greenhouse told us.
Teachers: Tools for teaching about Supreme Court cases will be the focus of a webinar on Oct. 18. Please R.S.V.P. here, and subscribe to our free weekly educator newsletter here.
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